Electro-Optical Nanotraps for Neutral Atoms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel nanoscale electro-optical trap for neutral atoms using a charged carbon nanotube with a plasmonic nanosphere dimer, enabling efficient atom trapping and loading.

Contribution

It presents a new design of electro-optical nanotraps utilizing plasmonic enhancement for trapping neutral atoms at the nanoscale.

Findings

Successful conceptual design of a nanotrap using a charged nanotube and nanosphere dimer.

Trap can load atoms directly with high velocities via two-photon spontaneous emission.

The trap combines a repulsive potential barrier with viscous damping for effective atom confinement.

Abstract

We propose a new class of nanoscale electro-optical traps for neutral atoms. A prototype is the toroidal trap created by a suspended, charged carbon nanotube decorated with a silver nanosphere dimer. An illuminating laser field, blue detuned from an atomic resonance frequency, is strongly focused by plasmons induced in the dimer and generates both a repulsive potential barrier near the nanostructure surface and a large viscous damping force that facilitates trap loading. Atoms with velocities of several meters per second may be loaded directly into the trap via spontaneous emission of just two photons.